Deirdre Heenan
speaker
106 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Jul 2026
last heard 12 Jul
Deirdre Heenan’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.
Appearances
Ian Paisley once referred to as our party, taking over our party.
And so that became very public when there was the leadership election and Poots won unexpectedly.
And yet within a matter of days, he was gone and Geoffrey Donaldson became the leader.
So there has always been that undertone of he's not really one of us anymore.
He's an interloper.
He is really the UUP.
But that doesn't wash with people because he was the leader.
He was there for a very long time.
He had a long and illustrious political career within the DUP.
He was the main man, the man that was sent over to negotiate with the British government.
He was the man that would save the union.
He was the man that stood up in the House of Commons and gave heartfelt speeches about the importance of the union.
So it's very, very difficult to now try to say, yes, but he really wasn't one of us.
And I think the whole point now is unionism is fractured and there's a three way split between the TUV, the DUP and the UUP.
the vote will be fractured and that will cause serious difficulties for unionism.
The DUP is expected to lose support.
So what will that mean in the next election?
What will that mean for the dynamics between the DUP and Sinn Féin if they come back as a lesser party, wounded, weakened?
What will that psychologically mean for unionism, which already sort of is giving this perception that it's on the back foot now?
It's a difficult one because I suppose traditionally political commentators would have talked about the UUP and its attempts to become a more liberal party, a more liberal middle ground party.
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